Bear | Not cheap, Fiscally concerned
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Nov 18
It’s raining bears
icon1 Sivan Segev | icon2 Investing | icon4 11 18th, 2008| icon3No Comments »

… They bite too…

30 reasons for Great Depression 2 by 2011

What’s the point of reading that - except to recognize that there’s real negative sentiment right now?! Yes - economic news these days is shitty++. Bulls are off in vacation (whereas some of them should be in prison…).

I should mention that this particular gloom and doom bear is… well… not really appreciated by his peers. Appropriate response found to his gloomy article:

I thought this guy had been a little too quiet lately. Apparently he was preparing his excuse for those bullet-proof, can’t lose “Lazy Portfolios” he pitched all year.

Who am I to know if he’s right or not. For that matter - I believe the current market reactions only proves that nobody really knows what will happen next. The only thing that is certain is that nobody sees any good in the future.

Continuing from my previous posts about strategic portfolio allocations, I present to you the following called “Bearded-Bear”:

icarra chart

Allocation is as follows:
SHY - 80% (Safest known income - Short term treasury bonds)
IAU - 10% (Gold trust)
SH - 10% (Short S&P 500)

The rational behind this portfolio is as follows: The portfolio seeks to maintain asset values over the long run regardless of the market volatility. The portfolio assumes the value of the treasury bonds will erode over time and therefor has a small allocation of gold. The allocation to gold and to bear funds is very small to reduce the affect of volatility. In case the portfolio is implemented at times of bull markets, the portfolio is expected to maintain its value because the large allocation to bonds will produce enough income to overcome the losses of the bear fund. It should show some gains when inflation is in play by the rise in the price of gold. At an extreme bear market like we are having, where deflation is in play, the bear fund takes it’s turn and bursts ahead to produce a portfolio that could withstand time.

That was the thought behind this portfolio, I’m not trying to sell it to you. In fact, I encourage you to read my disclaimer.

Related Posts:

Go no where Portfolio
Strategic Income Portfolio
Collection of Standard Sample Portfolios (Balanced, Conservative, Growth etc)
Investment Tactics

Cheers!

P.S. I just heard Bill O’Reilly telling his radio listeners “Frugality Now”… ;-) So I’ll link back to my own “Frugality Now” post.

Cheers Again.

Sep 5

It’s not like we didn’t know this is a bear market. That there was a credit crunch. That economies would slow. That oil was too high. That gold was traded upwards for no reason other than to trade. That the whole market was a huge bubble. My only amazement is how pundits say so - during or after the market crashes. I could dig up stories on how the market could rally from only 3 days ago. How the economy is turning, how it’s all political talk and nothing bad is really happening. On the same note, it’s easy to dig out gloom forecasters at any point in time. Especially politically motivated doomsday forecasters, and special interest ones who have put a bet on a market belly up at the wrong time.

So the story right now is that Hedge funds are truly falling apart and thus everything is on sale. The simple guy who’s hearing the words on sale in any other context would rush to buy. Clothes on sale, groceries on sale - heck, Picasso on sale - wouldn’t you buy? It doesn’t work like that with equities. Mainly because emotions are involved, and watching huge chunks of one persons NAV decline so immensely in one day or even a full year is sure to give you a heart ache.

Since during market sell offs - every pundit is a genius who can come up with a dozen reasons why the market should crash right now - and never go up ever again (yea, right) - I tend to ignore and disregard such opinions. There is a bear story, there’s always a bear story - but there’s only one true fact out there, stocks are falling. When stocks are falling there’s only one direct reason which you cannot refute - it’s because many big holders are selling, liquidating to be accurate.

I was playing with iCarra.com to back test my tactics, holdings and ideas. Consequently I updated the “tactics” page with a few more ideas, do check it out. My latest addition’s chart is quite amazing on the long run:

icarra chart

The tactic to reach that graph is the very last one in the table on my “tactics” page…

P.S. the teddy bear image at the top is from the Chelsea Teddy Bear company’s web site: chelseateddybear.com. I suggest a new teddy bear - for your investor/trader daddys (or mommys)… the trader-bear-on-market-collapse…. not sure how cute that would come up as.

Cheers!